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Some
Klezmer Music To Set The Mood

Click here for a 3-minute klezmer
Wedding Dance from Aaron Alexander. (Aaron is connected to
Rumsiskes
via the Tzadikov family, including R. "Chaim from Rumshishok"
Tzadikov.)
If
you have dial-up Web service: Expect
waits while more data is downloaded and buffered to your computer. If asked,
you can open or run it with the default application,
or save to your hard drive and play from there.

Recent Changes

12/22/2012

In Individual Families - updated Matz family.

2/12/11

In History - added "Tatar 7-year-old witnessed murders"
.

12/17/10

In Bibliography - added "Jews of the Kaišiodoris Region of Lithuania".

In Documents, added Soviet record of 1941-44 murders and deportations.

9/20/06

In Pictures, added 10 photos in cemetery.

2/24/06

In Maps, added 1830 map.

2/19/06

Removed broken links

1/16/06

1940 Rumsiskes phone book in Pictures

1/9/06

Revised web page
design.

1/6/06

Revised Matz family entry in Individual Famlies and Names.

1/6/06

New info in
Individual Families and Names on
Puskanzer and Marcus

6/7/05

Kauno
Marios outline
on pre-dam map in Maps -

Special
Interest Group

A
Special Interest Group on Rumsiskes has now been organized -- the
D.A.R. No, that's not what you think, it's Descendants of Anshei
Rumshishok. If you're interested, contact Rabbi Ben-Zion Saydman, or
send an e-mail to the address at the bottom of this page.

NOTE:
The old Rumsiskes was flooded by the Kauno Marios, a lake created by a
dam built at Kaunas (Kovno) in the 1950's. The modern Rumsiskes, shown
on modern maps, is a Lithuanian town just north of the old location.
The maps and photos on this site, except the "modern" ones, show the
old, pre-flooding location.

Close-up
showing Jewish cemetery and downtown Rumsiskes, from
the same photograph. The graves are among trees. The shadows of the
trees make the cemetery look rounded, but a close look shows that the
actual shape of the area is just as shown in the cemetery map (last map
above). The north fence of the cemetery is barely visible; it may be
easier to see on the big photo, above.

Photographs
of the
model of
Rumsiskes, made from 1922 data, in the present-day Jonas Aistis Museum
in Rumsiskes. They show the locations of many sites, including the
Jewish ones. The model maker was Vytautas Markevicius. (Courtesy of
Neringa Latvyte-Gustaitiene and Rolandas Gustaitis; Reproduced by kind
permission of Grazhina Meilutiene)

Photos 1,
2,
and
3 of the memorial stone at the Pieveliu murder site, and its
surroundings (courtesy of Rolandas Gustaitis), with an English
translation of the Yiddish inscription (courtesy of Rabbi Ben-Zion
Saydman). If this displays too small in your browser, try clicking on a
picture.

1936 application
and permit
for Abram Mayper to build a fence at 9 Vilnius Street, in Lithuanian.
The permit shows a plan of the property and house. "Namai" means
"house". (Courtesy of Rolandas Gustaitis)

The 1940 phone
"book"
of Rumsiskes -- one page with ten numbers. Not
even Rubinstein the pharmacist had a phone. (Courtesy of Yale J.
Reisner at the Ronald S.
Lauder Foundation Genealogy Project at the Jewish Historical Institute
of Poland, Warsaw, via Rabbi Ben-Zion Saydman..)

1806 Revision List (tax roll) for Rumsiskes:
Cover letter, and translated Revision List
for Microsoft Word or .for Microsoft Excel (faster download). This was just after the first Russian attempt to force Jews to take surnames. Many had not yet complied, and, since the rule was not firmly enforced until the 1830's, the later surnames of those who did comply may have changed completely. (Thanks to the transcription and translation work of the Jewish Family History Foundation, with financing from the Descendants of Anshei Rumshishok (DAR).)

Rumsiskes
section
(pp. 549-551)
of "Yidishe Shtet, Shtetlekh un Dorfishe Yishuvim in Lite" ("Jewish
Cities and Towns in Lithuania"), in Yiddish, by Berl Kagan (see also
Bibliography). Page
1, Page
2, and
Page 3, and an
English translation. (English translation courtesy of Aba
Gefen) Also, from the Keidan (Kedainiai) section of this book: "...the
second rabbi here [Keidan] was the Vilna rabbi Meir Duber b. Moshe
Eliezer Fager, earlier rabbi in Rumshishok, who died in 1906 in
America."

Mention
in the
JewishGen entry
for Meretch (Merkina), on the Niemen River, near the current Polish
border:
During the years 1768-1772 Jewish workers were employed in excavating
the Nemunas (Niemen) river between Meretch and Rumshishok (Rumsiskes),
in order to improve its sailing conditions.

A
memory of
the Rubinstein family in the 1930's, from Les Shipnuck.
Interesting also to people outside the family.

A chapter
of a book by a Christian native of Rumsiskes (P. M.
Mikalauskas-Skietele), written in his old age and relating some
childhood memories. It is included here because (1) it has a good
description of the area containing the Jewish cemetery and (2) it shows
in a non-hostile way the distance between the Jewish community and the
Christian community, as seen through the eyes of a Christian child.

A
note from 1936
about the rabbi's
salary, in Lithuanian. (Courtesy of Rolandas Gustaitis)

Before
and During
the HolocaustThese
references include both the pre-Holocaust
period and the Holocaust, or the Holocaust alone.

There
are a few seeming
discrepancies among the
various notes of the Holocaust. The museum mentions 300 Jews in
Rumsiskes, but other sources put the number murdered at 700. Actually,
as the SS report and the Koniuchowsky report show, the Jews murdered in
Rumsiskes amounted to about 700 -- almost all of them women and
children. The larger number is accounted for in one place by the fact
that many fleeing Jews were captured in and near Rumsiskes, and in
another place by the fact that the murders were of Jews from both
Rumsiskes and Ziezmariai. Ziezmariai is a nearby, somewhat larger,
town. It may be that both of these causes operated.

The
sources that mention it
agree that the men had
already been shipped off to the forced-labor camp at Pravieniskes.
Their deaths were spread over a long period.

One
source says that the mass
murder was in
Peveliu, about 3 km north of Rumsiskes, while another says that it was
1/2 km northwest of town. The report on mass graves (below) actually
shows both locations, as well as Pravieniskes.

Locations
of mass
graves from
the Rumsiskes murders, from "Yahadut Lita", pp. 358-359, in Hebrew (see
also Bibliography).
Page 1,
Page 2 and the
English translation. For reference, the Praviana river is a
stream going through the north end of old Rumsiskes (see Detailed View
of the Model, above). Pruvianashok is modern Pravieniskes (see maps).
(Hebrew version courtesy of Rabbi Ben-Zion Saydman, English translation
courtesy of Aba Gefen).

Tatar 7-year-old murder witness. An account of the
Holocaust murders in Rumsiskes, as seen by a boy who was only seven years old at the
time. He was a Tatar. (We have no idea of how a Tatar family happened to be living in Rumsiskes at
that time, although the Soviet Russian occupation may have had something to do with it.) The trauma
from this sight, and from the Nazi threats amounting to "You Tatar, you're next", stayed with him
through old age, when he was interviewed for this report.

Later
Years

These
references refer to the post-Holocaust period.

In
the 1950's, there was a transfer of at least
some graves from the Rumsiskes cemetery to Kaunas, before the Kauno
Marios flooding. Not all the details are yet clear.

"I
found out who
transferred
the remains from Rumshishok. It was Rafael Fin, head of the Hevra
Kadisha of Kaunas in 1958. He himself was not from Rumshishok, as I was
told by Shaya Matusevich, survivor or the Kaunas Ghetto and Dachau
concentration camp, who is now the Gabbai of the Kovno Synagogue. Kovno
does not have a Rabbi." Regina Kopilevich supplies this note (Nov.
2002).

This
section provides links to
family sites, including many photos such as these (but full-size).
It also is the place for other lists of individual names.

Rachel &
Chaim David
Poskanzer

Marx (Mordechai)
Mayper Family

Families
named
"Rumshishker" -
We have learned of families whose surnames are effectively
"Rumshishker". This is apparently a name that was not uncommon, at
least in Kaunas. We know of
three or four specific families. Perhaps (or perhaps not)
they were originally from Rumsiskes, and took this surname when Jews
were forced to take surnames (1805-1844). (From Olga Zabludoff and Art
Poskanzer)

Mayper
including Saydman and related parts of the Romms, the
Chipkins, the Leveys, the Avramsons, the Bayers, the Meltsners, the
Geffins, the Kagans, the Cohens, the Nurocks, the Zilberkveits, the
Siegels, and others.

What
other Rumshishkers would
like to have their families posted here? To
add a
site to this list, or if you'd like help preparing information
for the Web,please
send a message to the e-mail address at the bottom of this page.

Jews of the Kaišiodoris Region of Lithuania.
Rolandas Gustaitis, 2010, pub. Avotaynu, E. A very interesting story of the Jews in Kaišiodoris and its neighboring towns, including
Rumšiškes. English translation thanks to Leonas Bekeris. The original 2006 version in Lithuanian, Kaišiadoriu Regiono Žydai, is
ISBN 9986-646-29-4.

D.
Gelazhiene,
"Ekskursija po
Rumsiskiu, Apylinkes" ("Excursions in Rumsiskes and Environs"),
Rumsiskes, 2001, text in both E and L. A modern booklet designed for
tourists - contains useful maps and pictures.

P.
M.
Mikalauskas-Skietele,
"Apie Rumsiskiu, senove, miskus, burtus ir velnius" ("Rumsiskes past -
woods, magic, and devils"), Kaunas, 2000, L. Some mentions of Rumsiskes
Jews - cover is a photograph of a superb model (see Pictures) of 1922
Rumsiskes, which is now in the Jonas Aistis Museum there. This is the
book "by a Christian" from which the chapter under History - Before The
Holocaust was translated. It is mostly about the Christian Lithuanians.
The following items in Lithuanian look promising, but we need someone
who reads Lithuanian to see what parts, if any, are of direct interest
to us. Any volunteers?